


doth nightly rob the dayrie

by goldfishtobleroneandamitie



Series: you're human, so am I [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Mythology References, Uncommon Pairing, dark fae - Freeform, first date cuteness, nervous!Feuilly, trucks named bessie, Éponine is Mab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfishtobleroneandamitie/pseuds/goldfishtobleroneandamitie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Feuilly and Éponine have a first date (a little out of order) and it goes so well it's scary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doth nightly rob the dayrie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opabine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opabine/gifts).



> This is MAB, the mistris-Faerie,  
> That doth nightly rob the dayrie;  
> And she can hurt, or helpe the cherning,  
> (As shee please) without discerning...  
> Shall we strip the skipping jester?  
> This is shee, that empties cradles,  
> Takes out children, puts in ladles:  
> Traynes forth mid-wives in their slumber,  
> With a sive the holes to number  
> And then leads them, from her borroughs,  
> Home through ponds, and water furrowes!
> 
> -excerpt from Entertainment at Althorpe, Ben Jonson

Feuilly’s never spent this much time on his hair in his life.

He doesn’t want Enjolras’s Pantene-model curls, or even Jehan’s perfectly coiffed locks; he just wants, for once in his life, for his hair to lie _flat_.

And after two washings, a liberal amount of product borrowed from Courf (and hastily removed), and his scalp screaming from his manhandling of the comb, his hair’s as unruly as ever.

He’s due to pick up Éponine in twenty minutes.

“Christ,” he murmurs, running fingers through his hair. It makes it stick up, but considering but what it looked like before it isn’t a loss.

He leans forward on his fists, studying his own features. Carrot-top hair, of course—his distinguishing feature. Freckles across the bridge of his nose, leading into brown eyes that could uncharitably be called muddy. Too-long nose with a flare at the end, the Feuilly family nose, establishing his parentage as much as the strong chin and ginger hair. High, wide cheekbones with more freckles, which mottle red when he’s nervous, or hot, like now. He’s not sure what Éponine sees in this face. It’s a perfectly serviceable one, to be sure, but against Enjolras’s Antinous, Grantaire’s Photoshop-worthy blue eyes, Courf’s charismatic smile or even Combeferre’s face of intelligence personified, he knows he comes in poorly in the race of Les Amis Attractiveness. Hell, even Bahorel has the jock look going for him—Feuilly is what can best be described as ‘wiry’.

Éponine, by contrast, is arguably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He’s never put much stock in traditional beauty—blond hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks remind him uncomfortably of his grandmother’s china doll collection. Though Musichetta is perhaps more classically beautiful, with high forehead, doe eyes, and aristocratic features, the fact that Joly knows a hundred chemicals that would kill him instantly and that Bossuet would simply strangle him put a kibosh on that attraction before it could start. Éponine, though—she’s the perfect combination of myth and reality, of the fantastical and tangible. If Gavroche is an imp, Éponine is a member of the Unseelie Court—not bad, not good, only turning situations to her advantage. But her true resemblance to a Dark Fae is in her hair, her luxurious hair that goes to her waist in riotous curls and that he wants to wrap around his hand as he kisses her, so she can never leave him.

They haven’t even gone on _their first date_ yet.

And yet they click on a fundamental level. He ponders this as he vaguely leaves his apartment, locks the door, pets the cat of Mrs. Edmundsen next door, and gets into his truck (a gas-guzzler but the most reliable thing he could find for under $5,000). Though Éponine doesn’t talk about it much, he gets the impression that she comes from a monumentally shitty home, perhaps even nonexistent. She doesn’t go to college (no judgment there, neither does he—a part-time janitorial job in exchange for art history classes at Amherst doesn’t count), and she takes care of her younger brother, he knows. In the six months he’s known her she’s moved from barista to assistant manager, so she clearly doesn’t have a problem with wielding authority. He guesses it’s actually a lack of time and funds that keeps her from what she wants, rather than drive.

He’s not like that at all. Though he really couldn’t afford college even if he wanted to—his father died two weeks after his high school graduation, leaving his mother with six more kids to raise and virtually no income—but he wouldn’t spend money on many classes even if he had it, for the interminable American History through 1877 and Introduction to Ethics and Statistics As It Pertains to Whatever that seem surgically attached to Combeferre’s hands. He only has the job at Amherst so he can take the really interesting classes—not for credit, since he isn’t technically a student—about the history of French art between 1780 and 1795, or Illumination in the Modern World, or studies of socialism in growing populations—politics, history, art-related things that will do him absolutely no practical good. He can’t say he’s content with his life as it is—he doesn’t really want to be a mechanic forever—but he can’t for the life of him think of something else he’d like better, and his mother needs the money he sends her every month.

So he spends most of his time at the garage, smoking too much, going to Amis meetings because that’s where his friends are, and occasionally going out drinking with Bahorel. Most of the Amis are either paired off, gay, or both, which means they’re not really into his and Bahorel’s scene (he calls it ‘his and Bahorel’s', when he really means ‘Bahorel’s and Feuilly along for the ride'). Jehan likes poetry slams; Courfeyrac likes watching Jehan; Combeferre and Joly are always studying for the MCAT, or Organic Chemistry, or getting in volunteer hours at the ER; Bossuet and Musichetta are usually doing something cultured if Joly’s not around, or with Joly if he is; Enjolras is always writing another speech or organizing another rally for whatever the cause of the week is; and Grantaire’s usually getting pissed in some dive bar or bothering Enjolras. Bahorel, conversely, likes bars containing loud music, good beer, and preferably beautiful women. Feuilly’s never minded that before, but he’s found himself begging off more and more often in the last few months, even before he met Éponine. Now that he has, though, he feels even less inclined.

He realizes that not only has he psychoanalyzed himself into a funk, but that he’s managed to drive all the way to Éponine’s shared apartment without (apparently) looking at the road or breaking any laws. He shuts off the car, blows out an explosive breath, and takes the steps up two at a time before he can lose his nerve.

The door opens as soon as he knocks, making him wonder if she’s anticipated this moment as much as he has. When she opens the door, however, his nervousness flies out of his head—along with everything else.

Because Éponine looks _good._ She’s wearing a black dress that flares to her knees and doesn’t dip particularly low, but hugs her waist and hips, making him wonder if he could wrap both hands around her waist and touch thumb to thumb. In her strappy shoes she’s still only eye level with his chin, and he leans back on his heels to better look her in the eye. He realizes he actually hasn’t said anything yet, and her eyes are going from nervously anticipatory to a mixture of fearful and disappointed.

“Hi,” he offers lamely.

He’s mentally kicking himself before the syllable leaves his mouth. Jehan’s imagined castigation is ringing in his ears, because _honestly_ Feuilly could you at least _say something_ about how she looks—

“Hi.”

He jerks his head up again, knowing he looks like a deer in headlights but not in control enough of his faculties to change anything. He meets her eyes again, though, and the light has come back into them. She’s nervous too.

Somehow that makes everything a lot easier. He asks her if she’s ready to go, and she invites him in as she runs for a jacket and somehow this is even more intimate than seeing her naked. Which, he fiercely reminds himself, he _cannot_ think about right now, or they will not leave this apartment. He’s never been so badly affected by a woman before, and yet he wants to do right by her—not just bed her but take her out, talk to her about politics, bring her lunch when she’s swamped at work. He wants to do all the silly fluffy things that he sees Jehan and Courfeyrac doing, or Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta, but with her. And frankly, that scares the shit out of him.

Somehow he manages to get all the way out the door, down the stairs, and outside to his car without putting his foot in his mouth. He goes to open the passenger-side door for her, then realizes (incredibly belatedly) exactly how much of a piece of shit his car is. He mumbles out an apology for the state of his vehicle. She grabs his hand, threads her fingers through his to grip the handle, and responds:

“I actually really like trucks.”

With that, she tugs open the door and pulls herself onto the bench seat, and he nearly trips over his own feet getting to the drivers’ side door and starting the truck (whom Jehan has affectionately named Elizabeth and Courfeyrac has not-so-affectionately shortened to Bessie).  He tells her as much, and she laughs—a dark, husky laugh that takes his mind places it doesn’t belong this early in the evening—and replies that as long as Bessie knows her place on his priority list, she can deal with sharing.

He’s inordinately pleased by the response—one, that she doesn’t think he’s either a cowboy-wannabe or a tool for having a pickup truck named Bessie, and two, that she’s thought about this relationship enough to want to be his first priority.

After the initial conversational awkwardness, the date goes so smoothly it’s surreal. They go to a nice Italian restaurant off Main that Joly had recommended; they share spaghetti Bolognese and cannoli and talk about everything from Guantanamo Bay to Gavroche’s piano lessons from Grantaire; and when she tries to grab the check, he grabs her wrists and tells her that he may be from Boston, but his mama raised him right, as he sets down his credit card. She insists on paying the tip, though, and he lets her, because he understands not wanting to feel beholden.

Maybe it’s that that unites them more than anything else—what makes him understand her in a way that he’s sure (with a rush of exclusivity) the other Amis don’t. The circumstances she comes from may have been even worse than his own, but he understands paying his own way and the idea that owing someone is to be avoided at all costs. Even with the Amis, he’d insisted on walking four miles more than once rather than accepting a bus fare loan in the first two years he’d known Combeferre. That’s not something any of the others can really understand—not because they don’t try or don’t respect it, but because other than not having daily coffee money occasionally because they’d gone out drinking the Friday before, not a one of them understand what it means to be poor. Enjolras is from old, old money, and though he doesn’t flaunt it he doesn’t live in austerity, either—he has an apartment to himself in a nice part of town and his fridge is always well-stocked with organic vegetables and good alcohol. Courfeyrac and Combeferre are from similar neighborhoods, with parents that deposit rent money into their accounts every month and $50-a-week entertainment stipends. Bahorel’s solid middle class but a moocher—he gets free alcohol from his bartending jobs and cleans out his mother’s fridge whenever he goes home, and he only goes to Amherst because his dad used to work as a clerk in Admissions. Grantaire understands poverty, to be sure, but he’s one of the inner-city success stories, with financial aid to keep him in school for six years and subsidized student loans that pay for his alcohol. Grantaire will never get out of debt, that Feuilly knows, but what matters is that he doesn’t care. Not like Feuilly does, and not, apparently, like Éponine does.  

They wander the late-night streets after dinner, laughing at drunks getting thrown out of bars and sharing drinking stories. Somewhere in the middle her hand’s snaked into his, and she’s tucked into his side, with her shoes dangling from her other hand. She fits so well it’s like a missing puzzle piece.

It’s almost addicting, the ease of this night. The conversation flows easily—and he’s not a talker, so he surprises even himself with how verbose he finds himself. But even when he’s silent, he’s content to watch her talk and move her hands, animated by sheer conviction. She has the same magnetism Enjolras does, the strength to hold a room with only the power of her voice.

(Or perhaps just him. It doesn’t matter.)

They explore the neighborhood for literally hours, until it’s midnight and Grantaire texts Éponine crossly that he has to be awake at seven, thank you very much, and if they can detach their mouths long enough he’d like Gavroche taken off his hands. Éponine shoots back that it isn’t their mouths that’s attached, switches her phone back with finality, then looks at Feuilly apologetically from under her eyelashes and asks if he can please take her home?

They hold hands on the ride back to her flat or, more accurately, she traces patterns on the back of his hand where it’s wrapped around the gearshift. He’s transported back to three days before, when she traced the same patterns on the same hand, and he thinks fondly of how that night turned out.

But she has to get home to Gavroche, and he knows that it wouldn’t be smart for him to be in her bedroom tomorrow, so he walks her up to her door, keeping his hands firmly to himself. Mostly.

And if Grantaire has to wait an extra twenty minutes for Feuilly to finish telling her goodbye, then,  well, he’ll just have to deal. Feuilly has to say good night to his Fairy Queen.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And so this relationship begins. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you that's read or appreciated this series--I can't seem to keep my love for this pairing, and this fandom, inside. I really hoped you enjoyed this bit and I promise to keep it coming!


End file.
